From the AP…
Conservatives’ clout flummoxes House GOP leaders
WASHINGTON (AP) – The clout of tea party advocates and other hard-line conservatives in Congress has caught top Republicans by surprise, raising questions about whether GOP leaders can impose enough discipline in their House majority to pass tough measures, such as raising the debt ceiling.
Within 24 hours this week, House Speaker John Boehner’s team had to pull a trade bill from the chamber floor, suffered an embarrassing setback on a USA Patriot Act vote, and failed to recoup money paid to the United Nations.
And in electoral politics, the tea party’s threat to Republican incumbents came more into focus. Three GOP senators up for re-election in 2012 could be looking at challenges for their party nominations. One of them, five-term Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, crossed town Tuesday to tell the tea party’s national town hall that he has supported its budget-balancing, smaller-government agenda for decades.
Comments 4
This brings to mind a pithy comeback from high school: “No shit, Sherlock.”
I could not believe so many Republicans voted in favor of keeping the PATRIOT Act in place.
Big government is bad! (Well, unless they wanna spy on us.)
Read the Constitution! (Well, skip over that pesky Fourth Amendment)
From the story, evidence of the GOP leadership’s timidity:
Another Republican leader Wednesday tried to cool the cost-cutting fever of tea partiers. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., proposed ending more than 60 government programs and cutting $35 billion in spending.
Cutting more deeply at this point, Rogers told colleagues, could lead to furloughs of federal workers at the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency, or politically wrenching cuts to health research, special education grants to local school districts, or college Pell Grants.
Any Republican who can’t cut more than $35 billion out of a budget of $3.4 trillion has little difference with the Obama Administration. Here’s to a Tea Party challenger to Hal Rogers in 2012.
Great Comments Mr. Fikes. Many are acting as if Nov 2010 was about GOP Power. I have zero tolerance with the liberals and even less with the RINO’s. The sleeping Giant in America has awakened through out most of the land, except for CA and will only become stronger. What makes America great are it’s people, not it’s political leaders.
They have taken advantage of the American people long enough.